[1986:] Five of Child's seven texts have twenty-three or more verses and tell a story far more complex than that found in most of the versions recently printed or collected in the field.
A young man of good family disguises himself as a poor Highlander and, while in Edinburgh, courts Lizie Lindsay. He gives a fictitious description of his family, his home, and so on, and introduces himself, asking Lizie to go to the Highlands with him. She is loth to leave the town and the Lowlands to go with a stranger. Her serving-maid urges her to accept the offer and, finally, she does so. During the journey to the Highlands she begins to regret her decision. At the point where she is almost ready to turn back, they either arrive at his home or he takes her up a high hill to view the lands and property which she has gained through following him.
The ballad has been in print since 1787, when Johnson published, in the 'Scots Musical Museum', a one-stanza fragment contributed by Burns. [...] There is a secondary form of the ballad, The Blaeberry Courtship, discussed by Laws, who calls it a 'modernisation of the story told in Lizie Lindsay'. (MacColl/Seeger, Doomsday 182)